


Mirror

by TheSilentUnderworld



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Baggage, M/M, Past Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 02:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5609761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSilentUnderworld/pseuds/TheSilentUnderworld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo senses it in the General sometimes, a darkness similar, but different than his own. It came in snippets of a sob story behind icy blues, flashes of memory, and an overbearing sense that something was amiss about the man, something the force often scratched the surface of. </p>
<p>Kylo never asks Hux about it, of course. They all had demons.  </p>
<p>But the force doesn't always ask when it shows you things, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror

If you look into a mirror long enough you will find imperfections. Cracks and stains- a copy, but not the same. Familiar and unfamiliar.   

Looking at the black haired Sith beside him was like looking into a mirror.

Hux knew this, knew just enough of Kylo Ren’s story to understand the irony of it all.

Kylo, however, knew all of Hux’s. Not on purpose, mind you- Kylo cared very little for the Generals sob story. Kylo had his own, too. Every monster has one.

But sometimes he would be in that man’s mind, looking for a witty comeback or snide remark, and get a flash. Sometimes it was almost like Hux’s mind was screaming these memories. Sometimes they were alone in the silence of a bedroom, on the verge of sleep, and it was.

Most memories came in the form of a smell with the General. The visuals, the sound, all stayed muffled and blurry. Like he had kept his eyes closed all his life.

His father wore this cologne, expensive and alien, that Hux knew not the origin of even now. Kylo could smell it, sometimes, in passing brushes against their shoulders. When the general was staring at a data pad, but not reading it, to disconnect to notice Kylo’s presence. When he was thinking, silent, about that man which had shaped him so immensely.  

The smell was sharp, as sharp- as dark and gripping as the man who wore it. It hit cool, cloudy, but dissolved into a pepper that made the senses cringe. Dizzying when Kylo didn’t expect it, heavy even when he did. The memories were always as overbearing as the cologne, like a shadow over the child Hux often was in those reminiscences.

Hux had sought so much from that man, Kylo understood, had sought acceptance, acknowledgment, approval- love. But he had gotten cold eyes, as cold as the ones Hux had inherited, and grew into standard issue combat boots and a last name instead.

He had grown up with a feeling deep in his heart that maybe the concept he so dearly wished for wasn’t real, and that’s why he had never felt it. That love was a fabrication his mother had whispered to him once, and he had held onto in vain for half a childhood.

In other memories, later on when the colognes heavy scent was replaced with military cafeterias and sweat, there was a boy at the academy that Kylo could swear Hux was in love with. He always smelled like bubblegum- chewing it all day despite the punishment such behavior could entail.

He was remembering that boy right now, as he looked over Kylo silently, indulging in the others form only while near darkness protected him.

The way the boy kissed Hux and left sugar on his lips. The way he made him feel like something more than a legacy- more than old money and tradition. Those memories were so soft- a different Hux kissed the boy back. One not yet sure about love, but so willing to find out.

But suddenly the memory shifted, horribly crackling into Hux’s mind like fire and changing the landscape- burning all the naivety and happiness away in place of ashes. Hux’s eyes shifted too, crystal clear blue seemed to be overtaken by the black abyss of his Pupils. The pastels of the boy seeped into fuzzy grey figures moving about. A Battlefield. Hux wasn’t on it, no, if his father had done him one justice in his life it was sparing him the treachery of true combat. He had risen through the ranks too quickly to ever have to set foot on enemy soil.

The boy hadn’t been so lucky.

The command room was too clean, the only colors perforating the memory were black, and the dull grey of screens. This was something that at the time seemed so foreign, disconnected, but now, now Hux wasn’t sure he could be comfortable anywhere else. There was no smell here- none Hux remembered or cared to. He imagined it might have been boot polish and cleaning chemicals, if he had payed attention.

The only noise that could be heard was the buzz of intel through the headphones of the command personnel inspecting each screen. He looked vaguely at some of them, then the current positions of forces either side had deployed- this was the first time he had commanded a battle. He stood there, for the first time 100% accountable for its outcome- his career would be shaped by the outcome of this skirmish, however non-pivotal it was.

But even then he held a confidence, less absolute then now, but enough to keep him sure. He was only worried for one thing, if Kylo was reading the feeling right, and it wasn’t the outcome.

Hux’s eyes glanced over to one screen for a moment, simply by chance. He saw one of his soldiers, a captain, fighting a rebellion officer of seemingly the same rank. Their uniforms were messy and not entirely standardized, making rank an educated guess. A tinge of anxiety swelled in his chest as he watched the procession- first their captain had the upper hand, then the rebel- picking up a native weapon, a laser sword. He cut their captains mask almost entirely off before knocking him to the floor and pinning him under boot.

It was the boy from the academy- a man now- the one Kylo was almost sure Hux had loved. The man was alone then, in an instant, on an alien world they had invaded for little more than Empire.

He was eyes wide and terrified, but the expression dulled into a sickening calm as the laser sword pierced his chest and stole the life from him in an instant.

Hux smelled the blood that dripped from his mouth, metal and bubblegum, despite being miles away in a control room. He felt so much in that moment, loss, horror, grief, a mired of the worst pieces of the human experience- and then? A snap in the back of his mind, a sinking in deepest part of his chest.

Hux stood there, looking at the screen as it changed to a new view of the battle, and felt nothing. As black inside as the room around him. He was alone.

This was the moment that Hux made up his mind about love, and everything.

He won the battle.

Hux had functioned with the same absolute emptiness for ten years. The idea that he was alone in this, in life. That all anyone could ever do was try to hurt him. It helped him raise to the rank of general once his father’s prestige wore off. It helped him raise to Snoke’s favor.

He looked at it that way.

The emptiness helped.

Kylo’s eyes were stuck on Hux’s, and how they flitted through the memory of feeling in the low light of the room, a mirror, a repetition. Cracked and stained, but that hauntingly familiar reflection. Someone made out of fear and daddy issues, lost love and poor coping.

Hux’s eyes began to slip closed- what hour was it? How long had they simply laid here in silence? Who’s room was this- ah, Hux’s. He could tell by how comfortable the sheets were. The important details remained muddled, but Kylo was drawn from the idea of a reflection as the General slipped into the unsure arms of sleep.

A few waking thoughts went through him- now on how Kylo wasn’t bubble gum or sharp cologne. No- he was lightsaber burns and adrenaline, he was perfectly different than the only other men Hux dared to say, or not to say, he had loved in his life. Kylo smiled at that.

Hux looked over his conclusion on love, its stupidity and its lack of worth. He looked back at how the concept had hurt him and how his way of assuring it never happen again was simply not to love.

The last thing Kylo sensed before the General faded out was not that though, nothing so spiteful.

‘Maybe I was wrong.’

Kylo couldn’t, or didn’t, stop himself from kissing Hux’s forehead once he was good and out.

Whatever this thing they had was, he was finding it harder and harder to slip away when they were done. He had gotten what he wanted hours ago.

He _should_ go. The way of the darkness was one of power, and anger- split second decisions and personal gain. Kylo obtained what he wanted from Hux early on in this- whatever they had. Angry sex, hateful pulling of hair and bite marks the General would remember, uncomfortably, the next morning as he sealed the caller on his uniform. The relationship was not meant to grow past that.

The darkness inside of him dictated that he leave.

And yet he couldn’t even imagine the sleeping man next to him alone in this too-big bed of his.


End file.
